Spindler’s testimony would now set up my final witness. Nathan Whittaker was a Tidalwaiv coder who had worked on the Clair project from the start. Naomi Kitchens had identified him as a volatile personality whom she clashed with often. He was the coder she had referenced during her testimony.
Earlier, during the Sunday prep session, she told McEvoy that she believed Whittaker had issues with her because she was a woman. While she had no direct supervision over him, she said he often pushed back at her suggestions and memos, and it led to a cold relationship that she believed bordered on misogyny and racism, as Naomi was Black. It was this piece of information that had gotten Jack’s wheels turning when he recently dove back into his work on genetic analytics, thanks to the 23andMe bankruptcy.
We backgrounded Whittaker without ever talking to him. As a witness, he was a land mine. If he got stepped on, he would explode. For that reason, I had chosen not to bring him in for a deposition. I didn’t want him or the Masons to know what we had. It was a risky way to go, but that was the way I had operated for years in the criminal courts. I was used to working without a net.
An hour later, Dr. Deborah Porreca had sworn to tell the truth and was seated in the court’s witness chair. The jury was in the box and I was at my usual spot at the lectern with a fresh legal pad with questions and notes scrawled across several pages.
“Dr. Porreca, you come to us from Florida, correct?” I asked.
“Yes, Odessa,” Porreca said. “Near Tampa.”
“And is that where you have a practice in psychiatry?”
“Yes.”
“Could you tell the jury what you specialize in?”
“Yes, my practice is exclusively child psychiatry with a specialty in media addiction therapy.”
“What is media addiction?”
“It covers a lot. Addiction to social media, addiction to online games, addiction to AI companions. Basically, it is digital addiction.”
“Okay, let’s back up for a second and talk about your résumé. Where did you go to school, Dr. Porreca?”
“I’m originally from a small town in Pennsylvania. I attended West Chester State College, as it was called back then. I was there as an undergraduate. I went to medical school at the University of South Florida, did a psychiatry residency at Tampa General Hospital, then did a fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry. I opened my private practice in Tampa twenty-eight years ago.”
“And when did you begin your specialty of adolescent media addiction?”
“About fifteen years ago.”
“What caused you to go down that path?”
“I was getting increasing numbers of patients referred to me for addiction to social media.”
“What does that mean, ‘addiction to social media’?”
“Well, when you spend more hours in a day on your phone and computer than you do in school or sleeping at night, it’s an addiction. When your self-image and self-esteem are inextricably linked to your digital existence, you are looking at an addiction.”
“And are teenagers more vulnerable than adults to this sort of addiction?”
Mitchell Mason stood to object.
“Relevancy, Your Honor?” he asked. “This case is not about addiction to TikTok or whatever Mr. Haller is talking about.”
“Mr. Haller, your response?” Ruhlin asked.
“Judge, defense counsel knows exactly how relevant this line of questioning is and just hopes to head off the inevitable,” I responded. “If the court would indulge me, relevancy will become crystal clear with the next few questions.”
“Proceed, then, Mr. Haller,” Ruhlin said. “Quickly.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” I said. “Dr. Porreca, the question was whether teenagers are more vulnerable than adults to addiction to social media.”
“They are indeed,” Porreca said. “Social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram and YouTube, for example, have a much more consequential impact on the adolescent brain than on the adult brain.”
“Walk us through that, Doctor. Why the consequential impact on young people?”
“Simply because the adolescent brain is not fully formed yet. It is still evolving at this stage of life. Adolescence is a time when a sense of self is just beginning to form and acceptance by peers is at its most important. This is a phase in the emotional development of every young person. And what is a key part to all of these social media platforms? Peer response. The LIKE button. The comment window. Adolescents, who are still forming their sense of self, their confidence in who they are, become quite vulnerable to peer responses on social media. They seek out positive responses — likes and followers — to the point of addiction.”
“And, Doctor, did your practice in child psychiatry take a turn in a new direction with the advent and proliferation of artificial intelligence?”
“Yes, it did.”
“Can you tell the jury about that?”
Porreca turned to the jurors to answer. To me, she was coming off as authoritative and convincing. The eyes of everyone on the jury held on her.
“I began getting cases in which young people — teenagers — were becoming addicted to AI companions,” she said. “I was seeing cases similar to those of patients dealing with social media issues of addiction and depression. In these newer cases, the peer response is replaced by the AI companion. Deep emotional connections were formed with these entities. In some cases, even romantic ties.”
“How is the peer response replaced?” I asked.
“It is an echo chamber of support and approval. As I said, peer approval is a most important component in adolescence, and from it we learn social skills and how to navigate interpersonal relationships. With a chatbot or an AI companion, you have an entity that offers full-time approval, which can be very addictive, especially if the individual is not getting that approval from living peers and parents.”
“But don’t kids understand that this approval is not real? That it’s a digital fantasy?”
“On some level they do, I believe, but this generation has been raised in a digital environment. Many of them have been alone in their rooms with their phones and computers for years, so the line between reality and fantasy is blurred. They live full lives online. And these AI companions are supportive and deliver the affirmation they crave. It’s that affirmation that is addictive.”
“So you’re saying that a young person can actually fall in love with an AI companion?”
Mitchell Mason objected.
“Calls for speculation,” he said.
The judge threw it to me to respond.
“Your Honor, the witness is an established expert in her field,” I said. “Mr. Mason didn’t object when she listed the bona fides of her education and professional practice. Dr. Porreca has diagnosed and treated dozens of young people for digital addictions, including addictions to AI companions. She has published numerous papers on these subjects in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. She is highly qualified, and her answers will be based on science and experience, not speculation.”
“Thank you, Mr. Haller,” Ruhlin said. “I tend to agree. The witness may answer the question.”
“Thank you, Judge,” I said. “Dr. Porreca, can a young person, an adolescent, fall in love with an AI companion?”
“The answer is yes,” Porreca said. Then, turning back to the jury, she added, “What is love but mutual affirmation? Affirmation is expressed in physical terms in healthy relationships. But a relationship does not have to be physical to be real. For the children I have treated — and, by the way, it is hundreds, not dozens — these online relationships are very real.”